When considering a move between firms at the partner level working with a successful career recruiter can both ease the process as well as help to ensure the best possible result both in finding the right fit as well as financially. During this process the recruiter can help identify specific firms that fit set parameters as well as additional needs that the partner may not be aware of. With longtime relationships with a large network of firms in the Southern California area, the recruiter at The Jameson Group will also act as a go-between with the firm and partner throughout negotiations, which is particularly important to prevent misunderstandings.

Going through a recruiter also guarantees that the partner will have an active, positive proponent consistently in contact with the firm whereas even if they have an existing connection to someone at a given firm they may not necessarily put their own reputation on the line to promote the partner as a good hire. During negotiations, the recruiter will also help to prepare a business plan based on the specific needs of the partner and what they can bring to the firm. Finally, they will do their utmost to help the partner close the best possible deal.

When considering a move between firms at the partner level, working with a successful career recruiter can both ease the process as well as help to ensure the best possible result both in finding the right fit as well as financially. During this process the recruiter can help identify specific firms that fit set parameters as well as additional needs that the partner may not be aware of. With longtime relationships with a large network of firms in the Southern California area, the recruiter at The Jameson Group will also act as a go-between with the firm and partner throughout negotiations, which is particularly important to prevent misunderstandings.

Going through a recruiter also guarantees that the partner will have an active, positive proponent consistently in contact with the firm whereas even if they have an existing connection to someone at a given firm they may not necessarily put their own reputation on the line to promote the partner as a good hire. During negotiations, the recruiter will also help to prepare a business plan based on the specific needs of the partner and what they can bring to the firm. Finally, they will do their utmost to help the partner close the best possible deal.

Developing and maintaining a portable book of business is critical to the long-term growth and flexibility for the majority of law-firm lawyers. By constructing a legal book of business, a lawyer can ensure a higher level of understanding, communication, and collaboration with clients while at the same time securing revenue sources independent from their respective firm. This individually sourced revenue can also help provide lawyers with more career options both at their current firms and otherwise, especially in hard times economically.

Whereas before the turn of the millennium it was rather rare for partners to switch law firms, today it was effectively become commonplace for a variety of reasons. The first and most obvious concern when considering switching law firms is that of compensation. This factor is directly tied to the lawyer’s book of business, which dictates the potential revenue they can bring and can provide powerful leverage in such a situation.

However, building a large book of business as part of a larger firm can prove especially difficult considering that many such firms primarily take on cases in the millions or tens of millions of dollars, eclipsing a single partner’s stake. As such, the relationship between the lawyer and the client has become more critical than ever and as we move further into the digital age social media has become an increasingly necessary tool to maintain these relationships. Most clients tend to award their accounts to those they know and trust, so cultivating these relationships by devoting a weekly period of time to client development can prove invaluable.

While Twitter, Facebook, and especially LinkedIn play important rules in extending your network today, in building a book of business it is important that you do not only rely on these rather impersonal methods of communication; things such as networking events or even a simple holiday card could be a very successful way for associates and junior associates to move their careers forward. Furthermore, speaking appearances on a particular subject or field of work as well as traditional publishing routes can provide additional differentiation from the pack and thus options.

With today’s blog entry we finish up our three-part series on the ins and outs of working with a legal recruiter. With parts I and II we looked at the reasons a partner might find themselves considering a move from their current firm and we discussed the benefits of working with an experienced headhunter as opposed to going it alone. But how does one know whether the voice at the other end of the phone belongs to a talented, informed professional or just some schmuck with a lead list and a speed-dialer? While there’s no absolute litmus test, there are some basic rules of thumb.

We’ll start by saying it’s unrealistic to expect any recruiter to know everything about you or your prospective firms. However, they should have a strong sense of your practice (i.e. your areas of expertise, your work history, your typical clients/industries, etc.) as well as a solid grasp of why a particular opportunity might be right for you.

Odds are your first contact with any legal recruiter will be an email or voicemail message. We can begin the winnowing process here. Simply put, the recruiter should know who you are and what you do—i.e., does the opportunity presented actually match your skill-set and area of focus? As an example, if you’re a healthcare partner with a practice primarily representing doctors and hospitals but you’ve been contacted about a payor-side opportunity, you clearly have someone who hasn’t done their homework. This is probably a recruiter simply working their way down a list rather than an expert engaged in a focused search.

Between your firm profile, your LinkedIn page (if you don’t have one, you should; please see our November 7th blog), press releases, news items and any articles you may have authored, your professional life is no longer a closed book. In the information age there is no excuse for a legal recruiter to be unfamiliar with who you are or what you do. The most useful and telling question you can ask any recruiter is a simple one: Why did you decide to call me? To be sure, every headhunter will have an answer; the question is whether it’s a good one.

If the recruiter truly understands the firm and position they are soliciting—and why your experience makes you a good potential candidate—they should be able to respond to this question quickly and clearly. This will generally be the recruiter who has sat down with the firm’s management and relevant practice heads and who has an insider’s understanding of what the firm seeks in a lateral hire. They should also have a good working knowledge of how a given firm functions, from compensation structure to office culture, sufficient to give you comfort in the first couple of minutes. If a recruiter seems uncertain on any of these core issues, you’re probably talking to the wrong person.

Bottom line, if a recruiter has bothered to do their research before ever picking up the phone, they’re likely someone worth your time. Neither of you will know whether a particular opportunity is truly right for you until you’ve had a substantial conversation, but working with someone who understands your practice is always a good start.

If your initial contact with a recruiter has given you comfort and you find the opportunity presented to be intriguing, ask about their placement history with the firm. Have they ever placed a partner with this particular office? If so, how long ago? Is that partner still there? The best recruiter will not always be the one on retainer or the one with the extensive placement history, but, if nothing else, both speak to the firm’s confidence and familiarity with that particular recruiter. What matters most is that you’re dealing with someone who has a handle on your practice and understands how this new opportunity will differ qualitatively from your current position.computer antivirus software

There’s no doubt that we now live in a global economy and, while you probably won’t get solicited by a recruiter hailing from another continent, you may very well get calls from headhunters working in other parts of the state or even other parts of the country. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Recruiters can, and do, become experts on markets other than their own and an unfamiliar area code alone shouldn’t dissuade you from talking with them. If you get a call from a Chicago-based recruiter who just happens to have placed five partners in Los Angeles over the past two years, odds are they have a strong working knowledge of the local firms, players and industries despite their non-local address.

Again, it comes down to information and experience. If you do get a call from an out-of-town or out-of-state recruiter, test their knowledge of your market. If you’re a transactional partner focused on capital markets, ask who heads the corporate practice in the local office and how your practice would fit in. Has the recruiter actually spoken directly with any of the local partners? If so, who, and what have they expressed regarding local needs? Who would you likely meet with if you did decide to sit down with the firm? How big is the local office and what are their growth objectives? What other practice areas are represented in the office? If the individual at the other end of the line can’t readily answer these questions, move on. Regardless of your market, there are sure to be many other recruiters, whether local or otherwise, who know it well and can add value to your search.

So what if you find yourself with two (or more) recruiters presenting you with attractive positions at different firms? It’s not unheard of for a partner to work simultaneously with multiple recruiters but it’s probably not the most efficient means to approach an already complex process. If possible, focus your efforts with a single recruiter you trust and with whom you’re comfortable working. If contact with other headhunters has you concerned that a good potential firm has been overlooked, discuss it with your current legal recruiter. There may be a very good reason he or she omitted that option. If not—and if you feel some other recruiter has a stronger connection and clearer line of communication with the firm—you can always let them present you.

In any case, if you do plan to work with multiple legal recruiters, communication and honesty will be your best policies. It’s up to you how much you share with each individual but keeping everyone involved reasonably informed will avoid redundant efforts and crossed lines. Think of it this way, if you can’t trust one of your recruiters with a complete picture of your search endeavors then that’s probably one recruiter worth losing.

Now that we’ve wrapped up this series, a final note on the lateral process in general. Like any other fundamental change in perspective, once you begin to view your current firm as one of many options—as opposed to the only option—it will never look quite the same again. Meeting with other partners in other shops might lead to the realization that a move is inevitable and something you should have done long ago, or might just as easily leave you appreciating your current firm like never before. In either case, the process will be an eye opener.

We recently began a series of short articles on the how, when and why of working with a legal recruiter. Now some may say (pessimistically, we think) that, as recruiters ourselves, we can’t help but be a little biased on the subject. That’s probably true; after all, if we didn’t believe in the value of legal recruiting, we’d almost certainly be doing something else. But we’re going to do our best to be honest and objective (you can let us know how we do with your feedback).

In Part I we opened with an illustration of the partner whose decade-plus practice was surviving without really thriving, and the fundamental change in perspective that resulted once he sat down and considered where he was and where he might go. But what about the partner who knows it’s time to move on from his/her current firm and is committed to taking the leap: should they embark on the journey alone or with the assistance of a recruiter? While we think the answers are a resounding “No” and “Yes!” respectively, let’s discuss why that is by looking at what a recruiter can—and can’t—provide.

First and foremost, a recruiter should be a source of quality intelligence, offering insight and information that might not be available anywhere else. Every recruiter worth their noise-cancelling headphones knows the importance of keeping an ear always to the ground. It allows us to listen for creaks and groans in the market and to decipher whether it’s the sound of emerging opportunity or impending doom; the ability to read between the headlines and behind the rumors is imperative to our success and to the success of the attorneys we assist.

But just as often, information comes to us far more directly. In a typical year we meet with twenty or thirty firms, very often at their request, to discuss what has—and hasn’t—worked regarding their recruiting efforts. These frank discussions with managing partners and practice heads provide us with a detailed picture of each firm’s strengths and weaknesses as well as a first-hand sense of internal culture. This is insight you simply can’t glean from content-approved press releases or the “About Us” page on the firm’s website.

Early access to this information will save you what you can least afford to squander–your time and effort. Knowing which firms are most likely to align with your interests and compliment your practice will be invaluable in focusing your search. An experienced recruiter should also be able to provide a sense of what value your book and practice represent in the current market and how best to present each to maximize results.

But remember, even with this direction, the partner job search is far from an absolute science. No amount of research can replace what you’ll learn from that first face-to-face. In the end, you will have to meet with firms and develop your own sense of fit and comfort, but a good recruiter can guide you through the process with far more efficiency and far less pain.

Once you have begun to speak seriously with prospective firms, a capable recruiter will make sure things move at an appropriate pace. While any decision as important as changing firms should be approached with due care and patience, we’ve learned that time—at least long, silent stretches of it—is not your friend. If the lateral process is allowed to stagnate, it can be far too easy for all parties involved to forget exactly why it is they sat down at the table to begin with.

Even in the best of cases and with the greatest of enthusiasm on all sides, the lateral hire life cycle is typically sluggish and fraught with delay. It is also likely to coincide with any number of professional emergencies that demand your time, from the final, frantic days of that buy-side transaction to the case that should never have gone to trial—but now has…in Omaha. An experienced recruiter can keep the lateral process ball rolling throughout all the foreseeable (and not so foreseeable) interruptions, making sure the deal remains alive and well until you are again ready to give it your attention. This might mean helping you fill out (and make sense of) interminable lateral partner questionnaires, working with you to construct and polish your business plan (yes, they will ask for a business plan) or simply calling the firm every week to restate just how interested you are and remind them exactly why it is that they love you.

Again, while the skilled recruiter can help immensely with this stage of the process, there are some things we just can’t do for you. You will be asked to collect information, lots of it, regarding your billing, collections, past clients, current clients, prospective clients, etc. Aggregating this data is often challenging (and doing so without setting off unwanted alarms at your current firm only makes it more so) but it’s a valuable and necessary exercise. For many partners, this will be the first time in years or even decades that they’ve really looked at their practice, not just as a series of cases or string of transactions but as an ongoing business unto itself. You’ll likely walk away with a deeper understanding of your practice and a clearer notion of your strengths as a business generator.

Finally, a recruiter can act as a third-party intermediary when the process needs one. This can mean taking a hard line during compensation negotiations so you don’t have to or simply making sure both sides communicate clearly and effectively throughout. Imperative when the typical recruiting effort involves hiring partners, managing partners, executive committees, compensation committees, practice leaders and any number of administrative personnel. It’s a process during which wires can and do get crossed, frequently. A quality legal recruiter will keep information flowing in the right direction and with your interests in mind.%%anc%%

So we’ve now outlined all the reason you should pick up the phone when a recruiter calls. But, as the title of this series so enticingly implies, when do we teach you to separate the recruiting wheat from the cold-call chaff? Have patience folks, Part III arrives next week.

I had originally intended to write this week’s blog on lawyers (more specifically, law firm partners) generating new business and clients. Specifically, why it’s so important to develop one’s own book of portable business and avoid becoming the “unintentional service partner.” But I decided against it.

Not because it isn’t a valid topic. It is. And certainly not because developing a stable of clients whose continuing business—and enduring loyalty—is anything other than imperative, particularly in our current era of eleventh hour mergers, unexpected dissolutions (firms, you know who you are) and now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t market opportunities. But because it’s just a bit too self-evident to really be useful. Of course you should strive to develop your own business—every lawyer needs to! I don’t think that’s really in question. And in this information age you have more tools at your disposal than any other time in history to identify and reach out to potential clients (see any one of our previous three blogs).

So instead of telling you what you already know, I thought we’d give you some insight that might not be so obvious. Call it the perspective from the other side of the phone, as only as a partner legal recruiter could provide.

Odds are, as an attorney and a law firm partner, you receive one, two or ten calls a week (a day!?) from legal recruiters. You may even have offered your assistant a healthy bonus and a week in your Maui timeshare if he/she proves capable of intercepting and dispatching such calls before they ever reach your ears. Understandable, particularly when you’re overwhelmed with work and changing law firms is the last thing on your mind. But it is nearly a statistical certainty that you will change firms at some point in your career—perhaps more than once—and when that time comes, you’ll have some decisions to make. Should you work with a partner legal recruiter or go it on your own? If you’re going to work with a partner legal recruiter, which one and how do you choose? Are there any benefits to working with more than one recruiter?

Over the next two or three weeks, we’ll look at each of these questions and draw on our twenty-plus years of recruiting experience to give you our unbiased take. Well, as unbiased as a recruiter can get.

Let’s start by taking one step back and look at the partner who probably should be considering his options but hasn’t realized it yet. This case can be best illustrated by a real-world example from this year. A law firm partner we’ve been working with for the past several months. Let’s call him Mike (not his real name).

We first identified Mike while working on a retained search for one of our law firm clients. They were looking to grow their labor and employment litigation practice and brought us in because we understood both their firm and their market. Mike had an impressive background, both academically and professionally, and seemed a good potential fit for our search. This story, as so many recruiting stories do, began with an email and a cold call. After leaving a couple of messages for Mike we eventually spoke. We talked for quite a while and I learned that Mike, as a result of mostly self-directed marketing efforts, had steadily built a respectable book of business. But Mike said he was relatively satisfied where he was and, as the call wound down, told me he’d be happy to meet (“Hey, I’m always open to networking”) but he wanted to manage expectations and make clear he had no intentions of leaving. We agreed to sit down for a casual coffee the following week.

It was obvious after the first fifteen minutes that Mike could do much better. He was significantly undercompensated given his current portable business, had grown his book as large as he was likely to atop his firm’s platform and was missing significant opportunities for cross-selling. Perhaps most surprising was the fact that he had clearly never thought about any of this seriously prior to our conversation. He was almost entirely unaware of competitive salaries, alternative compensation and bonus structures and even the comparative value of his practice within the local market. After a frank discussion and a hard look at where Mike hoped to take his legal practice, from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective, he agreed with us and decided it made sense to begin exploring his options—he is now being courted by several law firms.

While this may seem surprising, it’s not as unusual as you might think. After all, an attorney’s job is to know the law, service their clients and, if there’s any time left over, develop business. (And, after that, maybe you have some time for your family too.) Put simply, unless you’re the managing partner of your law firm, your focus is likely to be the practice of law, not the business of law.

This is where a knowledgeable and experienced recruiter can really add value. If you’ve kept you head down and your nose dutifully to the grindstone for the better part of a decade, you may eventually look up to find the landscape significantly changed. Partnering with a guide to help you navigate the lateral market is not only advisable but often means the difference between a lucrative, successful, long-term placement and finding yourself back in the market just a few unhappy years down the road.

But how to choose? How does one discern the good from the bad and the ugly? That will have to wait for our next blog!

In our previous two-part LinkedIn series, we focused on how to use the service to find the connections you need, so we now want to discuss how others can find you. After all, networking is a two-way street. With that in mind, let’s start with a few tips to strengthen your profile and your presence. Our intent is simple: we want to direct as many people as possible to your page and, when they arrive, we want them to be impressed.

Get Ready for Your Close-Up

Unless you’re somehow accessing this blog from the mid-1980s, odds are you already have an attorney profile floating around out there on your firm’s website. As such, there’s little point in creating a LinkedIn profile with the exact same information. Sure, you’ll want to include all the basics (professional summary, work history, education, areas of specialty, etc.), but LinkedIn allows you to do much more. So let’s look at how you can get your LinkedIn profile to work for you.

Get Connected

As discussed in our first LinkedIn blog post, the key to networking via the service lies in a healthy connections pool. Take advantage of the site’s ability to scour your email contacts to grow your connections (if you’d like a refresher on how to do this, just see our November 7th post below). Again, make sure your connections represent your real world contacts – the caveat from our first LinkedIn blog still stands (i.e. don’t include weak contacts just to pad your numbers).

This means taking the time to reach out to past clients and colleagues, the effort will be well worth it as it will increase your exposure and your likelihood of turning up in searches.

It’s All In The Details

Focus on increasing the detail/content of your LinkedIn profile. Use the “Summary” heading to highlight your areas of expertise as specifically as possible. Most attorneys—if they’ve provided a summary at all—simply cut and paste the language from their company profile. This is fine as a starting point, but consider adding more. See this as an opportunity to talk to viewers of your profile.

Ask yourself this: when someone sees my profile, does it clearly say what I’d like it to about myself and my practice? Does your summary clearly state your areas of expertise, the industries in which you specialize or your representative clients and cases? If not, take the time to include this information. If you only gain one new client as a result, it will be time well spent.

Get Recommended

Remember, your goal is to create a professional and powerful presence via your LinkedIn profile. Few things speak as loudly as a glowing recommendation from a past colleague or client. As the service so often does, LinkedIn has made the process of requesting recommendations as painless as possible.

Simply click the “Ask for a recommendation” link near the top right corner of your profile homepage and, when prompted, enter the name of the connection to whom you’ll be sending the request (or simply choose your intended recipients from a list of your connections). As is usually the case with this exceptionally user-friendly site, LinkedIn will walk you through all the necessary steps. The site even generates a few lines of suggested language to make the process that much easier.

Apply Yourself

LinkedIn offers a variety of applications that can be easily embedded into your personal profile. Two apps of potential interest to attorneys are Lawyer Ratings and My Travel.

Lawyer Ratings is a LexisNexis plug-in that allows attorneys to crow about their Martindale-Hubbell reviews and ratings via a very official-looking little stamp. It’s hardly revolutionary but it does prominently display that 4.9 out of 5 Client Review Rating of which you are so proud. On a more practical note, it allows clients who have not yet rated you to do so with a single click right from your profile.

My Travel is a nifty little application that compares your upcoming business travel plans to those of your connections pool, alerting you when you’ll be in the same town at the same time as your colleagues. The app will keep you on your peers’ radar and might even facilitate a sit-down with that potential client who never seems to be in their office.

Both apps can be found under the “More Tab” and among the dropdown items will be “More Applications” on your profile page.

Answer and You Shall Receive

A snappy profile with effusive recommendations will do you little good if no one sees it. In addition to a healthy connections pool, another means of increasing your LinkedIn exposure and directing more traffic to your profile is to take part in LinkedIn Answers. “Answers” is a knowledge exchange where users can post queries and have them answered by the service’s various members. Questions range across a wide variety of substantive areas with virtually no professional topics excluded.

To find your way into Answers, just choose the “More” link at the top middle of your profile page. First among the dropdown items will be “Answers.”

After navigating to the page choose “Law and Legal” from the right side column.

Once open, the Answers page will display a list of “open” questions, many of which may have already received answers but remain open nevertheless as their posters have yet to receive a response of sufficient clarity or specificity.

If you find an open question that you believe you can answer, simply click on the text of the inquiry. It will deliver you to a page with a gold “Answer” button just below the full language of the original question. Give it a click and proceed to share your expertise with the LinkedIn community—and, if you’re lucky, with a potential new client contact.

But be warned, all “experts” are not created equal and you may be somewhat underwhelmed by other answers you’re likely to see. Remember, the Internet’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: everyone has access. This is as true of the LinkedIn community as anywhere else. The service does not vet the various “experts” nor must one be an attorney to answer “Law and Legal” questions.

This can be both a good and a bad thing. The bad is probably obvious, but the good may not be. While the idea of non-attorneys answering complex questions of law and policy probably doesn’t thrill you, the fact that anyone can answer often means that non-experts will address an inquiry by referring someone who is an expert and with whom they’ve had a positive experience. If one of your friends, colleagues or clients stumbles across a legal question they can easily flag you as the right guy or gal to talk to and direct the poster to your LinkedIn page.

In any event, Answers is just another way to increase your LinkedIn exposure and connect with potential clients. Like any tool for growing your business, whether you choose to use it—or any of the above suggestions—is entirely up to you.

Well, we don’t know about you but we think that’s more than enough LinkedIn for now. We expect the service to become increasingly important and probably essential and we’re sure to return to the topic in the future but, for now, it’s time to move on.

This is the second part of our blog series on how attorneys should use LinkedIn to get better contacts and introductions to more effectively develop clients. From our previous posting, we have shown how you build your contacts and search for new client introductions. This part of our series assumes you have read our previous blog and now have a list of connections that might be able to facilitate contact with your target client sorted by relationship.

With two simple steps we’ve now generated a list of individuals who, in some way, connect you to your target. Because we’ve asked the site to sort by relationship, the top of your list should be populated by those having first- or second-degree relationships to the “company” we’ve searched (this is helpfully represented via a numeric designation next to each individual’s name). If you’re lucky, then your search will have generated one or more individuals having a first-degree relationship to your target entity. If this is the case, fantastic. It means that someone among your pool of LI connections works directly for, or with, your target. Now you might be thinking, “If one of my personal connections works for my target, wouldn’t I have known this without LinkedIn’s help?” The answer, often, is not necessarily. Lateral movement is just as ubiquitous in most industries as it is in the legal field. It can be easy to miss a colleague’s transition to a new company or position (although LinkedIn tries to help with this by emailing us every time one of our connections updates their profile) and a search of this kind will often yield a surprise or two.

But just as likely, your search will yield a string of second- and third-degree relationships—individuals who are not among your personal connections but are related to you through those connections. And this is where LinkedIn’s rubber really hits the cyber highway. Choosing any one of these profiles will yield a helpful little box graphically representing your relationship to the target via a series of arrows. You will appear at the top and the service will flow chart down through your connections to another LinkedIn member currently working for the target company. As you’ve probably guessed, 2nd degree relationships are those that link you to the target directly via one of your current connections and 3rd degrees link you indirectly via common connections between one of your colleagues and the target profile. In either case it’s now time to pick up the phone or compose an email explaining why you’re interested in your target and, ultimately, requesting an introduction from the relevant colleague. Again, this is why it’s so important that your connections are more than mere acquaintances; LinkedIn can provide you with the road map but, without willing colleagues, you’ll never make it to your destination.

Intelligence is Key

No, not your intelligence. You’re reading this blog, clearly realizing its value and seeking to learn more about a potentially powerful business development tool so your intellect is, obviously, beyond question! I’m talking about the kind of business intelligence needed to turn a prospective client into the real thing. Where did they go to school? What does their employment history consist of? What groups or networks are they currently affiliated with? The typical LinkedIn profile will answer many or all of these questions, often providing you with far more information than you’re likely to find on a company website. Coupled with the insight your connections can provide as to your target’s needs, concerns, recent and past dealings, etc., this should place you in the strongest position possible when that sought-after meeting finally arrives. Knowing your common ground (e.g. you’re both Berkeley alums or you each previously worked for Lehman Brothers – hey, I’m not saying you’re proud of that) can mean the difference between a fruitful first meeting and a series of long, awkward pauses.

But don’t limit your intelligence gathering to the prospective client. Learn as much as you can about your current connections as well. Ask yourself how you might be able to help them. Odds are you know someone who, while they haven’t been able to benefit you in any economically tangible way, could be invaluable to one of your connections. Never underestimate the power of reciprocity. When you reach out to request that introduction, don’t forget to mention your buddy in the apparel/finance/venture capital/music industry space that you believe he or she really needs to meet—and your willingness to provide the introduction. It’s an inescapable truth of human psychology: people are far more likely to return a favor rather than simply do you a favor.

Of course, the information age will only take us so far. Once your LinkedIn connections have worked their magic, it’s time to rely on those real world elements that will probably always be the cornerstone of how we conduct business: the phone call, the hand shake, the sit-down, the pitch.

My hope for this blog is that it evolves into a conversation, not just a monologue. Please feel free to contact me with your questions, comments or criticisms (we are also happy to take praise) and I’ll do my best to address them in future installments. Until then, be well and work happy.

With the unveiling of The Jameson Group’s new website, it seems only appropriate that our first blog entries address the subject of social media. Specifically, how social media can be used by attorneys to develop business and facilitate more effective and efficient networking. Your options for connecting with clients and colleagues via digital media are myriad, but we’re going to start this discussion by focusing on just one service: LinkedIn. The site has grown exponentially over the past year, and if you’re not already a member, odds are you will be soon. But, despite the number of legal professionals currently swelling LinkedIn’s ranks, the attorneys we work with often express more than a little uncertainty as to the practical benefits of the site. We’ve lost count of the number of times a colleague has told us they have a LinkedIn account but they’re not sure why or how to take advantage of it. The truth is, with a little know-how, the service can be an incredibly effective means of connecting you with the people you need to reach, whether to create new client relationships or strengthen existing ones. Accordingly, our first two blog posts will focus on helping you better understand and use LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is often described as Facebook for professionals. The comparison, while certainly oversimplified, is understandable. After all, both sites allow users to create individual profiles complete with personal photos and lists of interests, each seems to have transitioned overnight from novelty to necessity and in both cases amassing as many connections as possible seems to be the ultimate goal. If we were to stop there then the comparison would be apt. Unfortunately, many professionals do just that: they stop there. But with a basic understanding of LinkedIn’s powerful search functions, turning the site into one’s own personal client-development database is only a few clicks away. Before we move on to the nuts and bolts of networking on LinkedIn, a quick overview of the site is probably in order.

Let’s consider the numbers. Since its launch in 2003, LinkedIn has grown in excess of 100 million members, over half of whom reside outside the United States. The site now gains 1 million new members every ten days – that’s one new user per second (feel free to check my math). Every one of the Fortune 500 is represented on LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees. Additionally, the site’s various users represent 215 different industries globally. With these stats, it’s hard to debate LI’s networking potential. But for many attorneys, being a member of LinkedIn can be a bit like maintaining a high-end gym membership: you initially joined because so many of your friends and colleagues were already there, you feel vaguely guilty for not using it to better results and, when you do show up, without some expert assistance, you’re not entirely sure what you should be doing. The purpose of this blog is to address that last issue. While you might not be a bona fide LinkedIn expert once we’re through, I do expect you’ll have a much better sense of the service’s value as a practical and powerful tool.

Step One: Build Your Contacts

The larger your contact pool, the more likely you are to get that sought-after introduction. So take advantage of LinkedIn’s ability to interface with webmail services such as Google, Yahoo and AOL. The site will scan your contact list, determine which individuals are currently LinkedIn members and allow you to send a request to connect via the service (simply choose “Contacts” at the top of the page and then “Add Connections”—the service will walk you through the rest). But a word of caution, your end goal here is to create a group of contacts that you can actually use for referrals, introductions, intelligence, etc. Be selective. Only send invitations to those contacts with whom you have a strong relationship. Ask yourself a simple question: Would I be comfortable picking up the phone or firing off an email to ask this person for help? If the answer is no, move on. Remember, an impressively expansive connections pool will do you little good if it largely consists of weak contacts.

Step Two: The Search For A New Client Introduction Begins

It’s time to start the search process, so let’s start with a company search. Our goal will be to find someone among your current connections who can provide a needed introduction to a target client. Odds are you will be surprised at just who your friends and colleagues know. And this is the real value of LI, allowing you to utilize contacts you didn’t even know you had, recognizing data points that almost certainly would have otherwise gone unnoticed. To begin the process, go to your personal profile page and select the blue “Advanced” search option.

You’ll find it at the top of the page quietly sitting on your task bar’s far right edge. This unassuming hyperlink (rendered in the smallest, least conspicuous text you’re likely to see on the site) will provide you with access to LinkedIn’s powerful and highly customizable search feature. Once you’ve opened the page, make sure you’ve chosen the “Advanced People Search” tab. In future blogs, we’ll touch on the site’s other search features but for now we’ll stick with a basic company search.

A quick glance at the page and you’ll see empty text fields at the top and series of categories and check boxes below that allow you to refine your search even further. Unless you have the site’s Premium pay service, the lower half of the page is largely populated by data filters appearing as ghost icons (links that can be read but not selected). While these categories allow for very specific results filtering, most searches won’t require their use. If you find you just can’t live without options like limiting search results to only those Fortune 1000 companies currently sitting in the 251-500 range, then consider upgrading to premium. For the rest of us, the non-pay search should work just fine. As mentioned, we’re focusing on a specific company here so you’ll want to find the “Company” text field at the top of the page and insert the name of the organization you’d like to reach (think Boeing, Nike, Medtronic, etc. – you get the idea).

Remember, our objective here is to determine who among your current connections might be able to facilitate contact with your target entity. We can do this by selecting “Relationships” from the “Sort By” dropdown at the bottom of the page. Now hit the blue “Search” button and we’re on our way.